Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

As we come to believe that we need the baubles of the external world to be whole and submit to social conditioning, we become stereotyped and mechanical. Seeing the mechanical nature of our conditioned personalities can be a dark night of the soul, but is the only way for the Tin Man to find his…

“Our ideas about death define how we live our lives.” — Dag Hammarskjold The fear of death (in you or others) is a sometimes hidden, potent force affecting personality and behavior in strange and varied ways. To compensate for this fear, some will seek to control others, objects, money, the appearance of youth, etc., in…

It is easy to fall into power games and struggles for dominance. Many species are hierarchical with alpha and omega positions and competition for status. Where love is present the power principle recedes. Where love is absent the power principle ascends. This is a propitious time to recognize and work on the ever-shifting ratio of…

According to mainstream biology parasites out number all other types of species four or five to one. All organisms contain parasites, and most of those parasites have parasites of their own. What is feeding on your energy? On what energies do you feed? Parasites may be microbial, governmental, interpersonal, intrapsychic. We cannot assume that we…

Many people interpret their lives as meaningless and random. If we look closer we may find meaningful patterns where superficial observation saw only randomness. This card draws your attention to the possibility of the outer world paralleling the inner world of psyche in ways that cannot be explained in terms of cause and effect. Jung…

We all have our blind spots, the areas of perception to which we do not pay attention. This is a propitious time to listen to that which we have not been listening, to see what we would not see, to feel and accept what we were in denial of. When other people are not receptive,…

“I Stood Upon a High Place” I stood upon a high place, And saw, below, many devils Running, leaping, and carousing in sin. One looked up, grinning, And said, “Comrade! Brother!” — Stephen Crane (1871-1900) There is no such thing in nature as an H-Bomb, that is all man’s doing. We are the great danger.…

Be true to your essence — that which created your DNA and incarnation circumstances – and allow others to be true to theirs. According to the Taoist I Ching, evolution occurs on the path of “reverse alchemy,” the path of “returning to the Tao.” Evolution does not necessarily occur by perpetual attunement to the Tao.…

Is there something you see as more powerful than yourself which you worship? The Sanskrit definition of God is a circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere. You are at the center of the circle, and so is everything else. If you worship an external savior and therefore place yourself as outside…

Change is our only constant. Something in you and/or the outer situation has to change. Go with the flow of transformation, don’t resist it by clinging to the obsolescent structures of the past. Life is change, you must keep moving, changing, adapting, transforming. Woody Allen, in his classic film, Annie Hall, said: “A relationship, I…